L.A. Confidential . Tucson Weekly . 10-06-97

L.A. Confidential

DIRECTED BY: Curtis Hanson

REVIEWED: 10-06-97

Glamour girls! Scandal! Gunplay! Nose Jobs! The place is the City of Angels; the time is the 1950s. The thrills starts when honest but prissy officer Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) opens the door to the men's room of the Nite Owl Café and finds a half dozen bullet-pierced bodies strewn across the linoleum. From then on it's seedy characters, clever plot twists and bracing moral dilemmas as a precinct full of cops harass, pummel and caress each other and the smelly underbelly of Los Angeles. Ed Exley goes head to head with his nemesis, fellow officer Bud White (Russell Crowe), a thug known for his brawn but not his brains. The two tackle the Nite Owl mystery with a passion while their suave, detached colleague Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) coolly observes. L.A. Confidential courses down the same clotted drainage ditch as Chinatown, but without Polanski's dark and brooding spirit. L.A. Confidential is sort of like Chinatown lite--a taut and rousing thriller that's well worth seeing.

--Richter

Full Length Reviews
L.A. Confidential
L.A. Confidential
L.A. Confidential
L.A. Confidential

Capsule Reviews
L.A. Confidential

Other Films by Curtis Hanson
The River Wild

Film Vault Suggested Links
Desperate Measures
Ransom
La Cucaracha

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